ANCESTRY- Newsletter- July 1, 2023

29 Jun ANCESTRY- Newsletter- July 1, 2023

ANCESTRY- ALEXANDER HAMILTON’S FATHER-IN-LAW GOT TAKEN FOR A RIDE

A statue of the Revolutionary War general, newly prominent thanks to the musical “Hamilton,” has been removed from its place outside Albany City Hall because he enslaved people.

Lin-Manuel Miranda said that the portrayal of Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and other white historical figures by black, Latino and Asian actors should not require any substantial suspension of disbelief by audience members. “Our cast looks like America looks now, and that’s certainly intentional”, he said. “It’s a way of pulling you into the story and allowing you to leave whatever cultural baggage you have about the founding fathers at the door.”

Hamilton, brought into the limelight a man most people forgot as had died over 200 years ago.
He was “rediscovered” as he was Alexander Hamilton’s father-in-law, and the ancestry of Hamilton.

You can read more here about Peter Schuyler and the removal of his statue.
https://www.newyorkalmanack.com/2023/06/albanys-philip-schuyler-statue-removed-from-city-hall/#:~:text=Schuyler%20(1733%2D1804)%20has,the%20enduring%20legacy%20of%20slavery.

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ANCESTRY- VENTURING ACROSS THE KARMAN LINE

Two days ago, Virgin Galactic, the cosmic travel company run by an eccentric British billionaire with platinum blond hair, is set to launch its first commercial trip to space… sort of.

At roughly 62 miles high, the Kármán Line is considered the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and the beginning of outer space. Virgin’s 01 rocket plane will fly about 55 miles high, passengers will experience weightlessness for a few minutes, and then the plane will come back down. Good news for the passengers, though: NASA considers anyone who’s traveled 50 miles above Earth to be a full-fledged astronaut.

So what’s the Karman line? It’s named after the first winner of the National Science Medal (506 awarded so far), with JFK presenting the medal in the picture above.

Theodore von Kármán, born Tivadar Mihály Kármán, 11 May 1881 – 6 May 1963), was a Hungarian-American mathematician, aerospace engineer, and physicist who worked in aeronautics and astronautics. He was responsible for crucial advances in aerodynamics characterizing supersonic and hypersonic airflow. The human-defined threshold of outer space is named the “Kármán line”. Kármán is regarded as an outstanding aerodynamic theoretician of the 20th century.

The picture above is Earth’s atmosphere photographed from the International Space Station. The orange line of airglow is at a slightly higher altitude (140–170 km) than the Kármán line.

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ANCESTRY- SO POCAHONTAS WASN’T THE FIRST NATIVE AMERICAN WOMAN TO TRAVEL TO EUROPE?

Vikings reached North American shores at least by the early 11th century. A recent study discovered that some Icelandic people with deep roots in the country possessed mitochondrial DNA specific to Native Americans. Since mitochondrial DNA is passed down from women, it’s likely that a Native American woman crossed the Atlantic with Vikings and had children in Iceland.

“Wife” may not accurately describe the woman’s relationship to the man who carried her across the sea, however. It’s impossible to know how willingly the woman went aboard the Viking ship. But based on what scholars know about Viking raids and the captives they took, it’s likely that cruelty and coercion were involved.

However, the Native Americans held their own. Vikings’ encounters with Native Americans actually appear in Scandinavian sagas. The Saga of the Greenlanders, for example, recounts how Thorvald, Leif Erikson’s brother, was slain when Native Americans tried to repel the Vikings in what is believed to be Newfoundland.

Vikings began a settlement in Newfoundland around the turn of the 11th century at what is now the L’Anse aux Meadows UNESCO site. While there, they both traded and clashed with the local Indigenous community, whom they called the “Skrælings.” In one skirmish, Native Americans bashed a Viking’s head in with a stone. Conflict with this Indigenous community may have been a factor in Vikings’ abandonment of the settlement. Were your ancestors Vikings or Native American?

Find My Ancestors- October 16, 2021

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ANCESTRY- DID YOU KNOW THAT THE U.K. HAS A PERPETUAL LEASE ON AMERICAN SOIL? WE CAMPED NEXT DOOR

HMT Bedfordshire (FY141) was an armed naval trawler in the service of the Royal Naval Patrol Service during World War II. Transferred to the East Coast of the United States to assist the United States Navy with anti-submarine patrols, she was staffed by a British and Canadian crew. Bedfordshire was sunk by the German submarine U-558 on 11 May 1942 off the coast of Ocracoke Island in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, with the loss of all hands.

Bodies were found on 14 May were identified as belonging to Sub-Lieutenant Thomas Cunningham and Ordinary Telegraphist Stanley Craig of the Bedfordshire. They were buried in a small plot next to a cemetery in Ocracoke Village. Shortly thereafter, two additional bodies from the ship washed ashore on Ocracoke. Unidentified, they were also buried in what became known as the Ocracoke Island British Cemetery.

On nearby Hatteras Island, the body of a fifth British seaman, unidentifiable but presumed to be from Bedfordshire, washed ashore on 21 May. The month prior, the body of another British sailor from the sunken merchant ship San Delfino had been buried on Hatteras; the Bedfordshire sailor’s body was interred in an adjacent plot, resulting in a second British Cemetery, formally known as Cape Hatteras Coast Guard Burial Ground.

The British Cemeteries on Ocracoke and Hatteras were leased in 1976 in perpetuity to the British government for as long as the interred bodies remain there. Formal custody is handled by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which provides the protocol headstones. Regular maintenance is handled by the US Coast Guard and local residents as a gesture of gratitude and respect to the fallen men and an act of comity to the British government. A Royal Navy flag flies over the cemeteries, and a ceremony is held there each year on 11 May to honor the men of the Bedfordshire. Are you ancestors in this cemetery?

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ANCESTRY- LOOKING FOR YOUR INAUGURAL INVITATION FOR 2025?

Joshua Vickers and Elizabeth Price Griffith Milhous had sons Franklin and Charles Wright Milhous. Franklin Milhous married Almira Park Burdg Milhous and had children, Hannah and Ezra. Hannah Milhous married Francis Anthony Nixon and had a son President Richard Milhous Nixon. Nixon married Pat Ryan, and they had daughters, Tricia and Julie Nixon.

Ezra Milhous married Anna Lima Hudson and had a daughter Alice Milhous who married Gene Needham. He was my mother-in-law’s brother, so Nixon’s daughters were first cousins to my wife’s first cousins.

Charles Wright Milhous married Rosa Urseola McClure and they had a daughter Neva Blanche Milhous, who would have been Hannah and Ezra Milhous’ first cousins. Neva married Theodore Thomas Suelke and they had a son Thomas Theodore Suelke. Tom would have been Richard Nixon’s second cousin. Tom married Kathryn, who is the sister of my wife’s father. They had two sons, who were my wife’s first cousins, and also third cousins of Tricia and Julie Nixon.

Confused yet? So, the next question is how is my wife related to Richard Nixon? She’s not blood related, her relationship would be that her aunt by marriage was Nixon’s cousin, and her uncle by marriage’s father was Nixon’s second cousin.

Above is a newspaper article about Alice and Gene going to Nixon’s inaugural. Of course, by the time I joined the family, Watergate had already happened so of course, I had to dig this up and surprise them what they already knew, but were not advertising.

Even though, I had become the husband of the ex-president’s cousin’s niece, I still had to pay full admission to tour the Richard Nixon Presidential Library.

So, reach out to Dancestors if you want to find out if current presidential candidates are your long lost ancestors!

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ANCESTRY- THE FIRST TEN WORDS OF THE AFRICAN AMERICAN DICTIONARY ARE IN!

Most people know Henry Louis Gates Jr. as the host of Finding Your Roots. In a recent online presentation, editors and researchers working on a first-of-its-kind dictionary of African American English gave a status update on the project. As academics explained their methodologies, slides displayed behind them showed words more often associated with Twitter than Oxford: “Bussin,” virtual attendees were told, means impressive or tasty, while a “boo” is a lover.

Those were two of the first 100 words the Oxford University Press said it had prepared to include in the Oxford Dictionary of African American English, the hopeful result of the three-year research project announced last spring.

The researchers say they aim to publish a first batch of 1,000 definitions — some words and phrases will have more than one — by March 2025. But the more important goal of the project, which will be edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr., a scholar of African American history at Harvard University, is to underscore the significance of African American English and to create a resource for future research into Black speech, history, and culture. Among his other bona fides, Professor Gates is a dictionary nerd.

Read more about Gates and dictionaries, and this dictionary by Sandra E. Garcia on May 23, 2023, New York Times (there may be a paywall) at:
The First 10 Words of the African American English Dictionary Are In – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Gates photo courtesy of Wikipedia- http://video.pbs.org/program/finding-your-roots/

I included, due to space limitations, only the first three definitions alphabetically:

Aunt Hagar’s Children (n.): A reference to Black people collectively. (Etymology: Probably a reference to Hagar in the Bible, who, with her son, Ishmael, was cast out by Sarah and Abraham [Ishmael’s father] and became, among some Black communities, the symbolic mother of all Africans and African Americans and of Black womanhood.)

bussin (adjective and participle): 1. Especially describing food: tasty, delicious. Also, more generally: impressive, excellent. 2. Describing a party, event, etc.: busy, crowded, lively. (Variant forms: bussing, bussin’.)

cakewalk (n.): 1. A contest in which Black people would perform a stylized walk in pairs, typically judged by a plantation owner. The winner would receive some type of cake. 2. Something that is considered easily done, as in This job is a cakewalk.

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ANCESTRY- HISTORIC PRAYER BOOK UNVEILED AT HEVER CASTLE

Experts say they’ve solved the mystery behind the ownership of a historically important prayer book after they linked it to a famous portrait of Thomas Cromwell.

According to historians, Cromwell’s book, the 1527 Book of Hours, is thought to be the only object from any Tudor portrait to have survived to this day.

It was featured by Henry VIII’s court painter Hans Holbein in his portrait of the statesman and royal adviser.

It is the third copy of the same book owned by Henry VIII’s wives Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn.

Assistant curator at Kent’s Hever Castle, Kate McCaffrey, linked in 2021 that the two women had copies of the same prayer book.

She then discovered the third copy of the 1527 Book of Hours at the Wren Library at Trinity College, Cambridge, which received it in August 1660.

A team of experts, including historian Tracy Borman, reviewed the evidence that led them to believe it was the same book in the Holbein painting and belonged to Cromwell.

Historians say it is the first time they have linked the three prayer books with their bejeweled, silver gilt binding.

Hever Castle’s curator Alison Palmer said: “It is thrilling to be a part of solving this 400-year-old mystery.”

Cromwell’s prayer book will be on display at Hever Castle until November.

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I was looking for an early article on submersibles being they have been in the news, and came across this 1866 story that also included that feared weapon, the “Needle Gun”.

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ANCESTRY- YOUR ANCESTORS ARE WAITING TO BE DISCOVERED!

Reach out to Dancestors and let us research, discover, and preserve your family history. No one is getting any younger, and stories disappear from memory every year and eventually from our potential ability to find them. Paper gets thrown in the trash; books survive! So do not hesitate and call me @ 214-914-3598.